Special Collections Research Center

Scope and Contents This collection is comprised of more than 700 letters written by Herman Recht (1908-1971), a Navy yeoman, from Camp Peary (U.S. Naval Construction Training Center), near Williamsburg, Virginia, between October 1943 and February 1946, to his wife, Esther, in Clairton, Pennsylvania. There are no letters from Esther because, as he wrote her, saving them would make him homesick.Recht had been a lawyer for eight and a half years before joining the Navy. He was very well read, and...